Commenti

Commento di Littlefurby

Commento di SgtGrumbles

In reality, all specs are viable in the majority of current content. \r\rI feel like this entire article is trying to gaslight me.

Commento di Aera

on 2019-02-13T19:57:54-06:00

The community needed this reality check.\r\rBludgeon it into them. Too many people are so easily influenced by faulty sims that don't factor in the necessary considerations. They see a minuscule number different on a chart, and they proclaim "X spec is trash". A tiny buff occurs that shifts overall DPS by a negligible amount, and they now believe this spec to be the only viable one.

Commento di ZombiZombi

on 2019-02-13T20:08:14-06:00

In reality, all specs are viable in the majority of current content. \r\rI feel like this entire article is trying to gaslight me.\r\rNo, they are right. It's just that 'majority of current content' is probably 'everything that isn't raids or mythic+', and that's the two things people are sticking around for.

Commento di gnostechnician

on 2019-02-13T20:13:54-06:00

A fantastic article! Thank you for this. It really taught me a lot.

Commento di Renuts

on 2019-02-13T20:33:15-06:00

I think something valuable to consider in this discussion is what defines the general player perception regarding what is actually considered to be powerful and effective, and what is not? For instance, a player might not be doing the most damage, but they are contributing by interrupting critical abilities, providing combat buffs to their party members, and assisting in ways that are not as easily recognizable.

Abilities like Gorefiend's Grasp and Shadow of Concealment are not only hugely beneficial to a group's success, but they are also clearly recognizable to all members of the party. Every time a Rogue uses Shadow of Concealment, every person in the party takes notice of it, and acknowledges it's immense power. Same thing goes with Gorefiend's Grasp and other similar abilities. If you are interrupting abilities, and providing buffs to party members, chances are these things will not be noticed in any kind of comparable way.

How many opportunities do each class and specialization actually get to be able to use these kinds of powerful abilities in ways that demonstrate the potential of their class and spec? The most well designed dungeons account for the wide arrange of specializations and abilities that each role and class has to offer. However, often times dungeon design seems to lean too heavily one way or another, and perhaps the majority of people have yet to figure out clever ways to utilize the toolkit of their preferred spec.

This kind of thinking demonstrates why it is a good idea in PUGs to use your damage cooldowns even on trivial trash. It places you higher on the DPS meters, and when you are in a PUG, doing the things that get you noticed as being valuable is very much important if you want to keep your spot there. Whatever class\/spec that I am playing, I do my utmost to provide the most for my group and raid. If I am playing a Priest I frequently use my Power Word Fortitude buff to make sure people always have it. I utilize abilities like Power Word Shield and it's movement speed boost on my party members even as a Shadow Priest in order to provide utility and value to that party. I also use a mod that announces my interrupts, not only to coordinate with my party, but also to get noticed for actually doing it.

This is a great discussion because I believe that some players who don't have things like Gorefiend's Grasp or Shadow of Concealment end up feeling so discouraged for not having them, that they end up making excuses instead of putting forth the effort to actually utilize their character to the best of their ability.

Commento di Eneathrielia

on 2019-02-13T20:53:10-06:00

Still waiting for arms to be anywhere close to viable in raids. Simming 3k less than fury after the laughable 4% overall dps (Yes it was 8%, but only to execute, MS, slam, overpower, rend. Big portion of damage is warbreaker,bladestorm,deepwounds and autoattacks that were left untouched) buff after they said they'd keep a close eye on the spec is not right. Not even desired as an execute class anymore either since execute hits for noodle damage.

Warrior already has no raid-wide utility that can not be replaced\/neglected by picking a superior ranged classes doing twice the damage in current tier, battle shout can be replaced by scroll.

Commento di nothingsjim

on 2019-02-13T20:53:12-06:00

The truth is, for vast majority of players, it's flatout unnecessary to get the "Optimal" comp. The optimal comp only comes to play when you're trying to push extremely high keys.\rEvery class can do +10, it's when you're hitting +17\/+18 area that some classes start to shine better. Blizzard obviously didn't balance classes around that and I can't fault them. Balancing classes around that extreme would mean giving nearly the same tool to every class, diminishing the uniqueness of classes. All that bad just to appeal for a small numbers of high M+ pushers.

Commento di sinangelus

on 2019-02-13T20:59:11-06:00

In reality, all specs are viable in the majority of current content. \r\rI feel like this entire article is trying to gaslight me.\r\rNo, they are right. It's just that 'majority of current content' is probably 'everything that isn't raids or mythic+', and that's the two things people are sticking around for.\rYeah, up to heroic raiding people play with whatever talents and specs they want an there's no need to min-max, just do the tactics and don't die to stupid stuff, similar with mythic raiding where you kill 3 bosses and then are stuck until 2 waves of nerfs come (casual mythic guilds). \r\rFor progression oriented guilds, please show me how dps dk is viable in BODA except as grip bot on gnome boss. Every known dk either rerolled to warrior \/ rogue \/ dh or is bottoming the meters. This is not a skill, gear or perception issue. This is class issue. Unholy is too weak and 20% on death coil buff was a joke. Frost has super weak azerite traits and can't compare with any melee who has strong traits therefore strongly benefitted from the extra azerite ring added in season 2. \r\r"Everything is viable" is a good slogan being spread by the top classes who often have to put 50% less effort to get 5% better result, but they dismiss it as "not a big difference". The difference is how hard it is to get the optimal result. Classes that rely on pin point positioning, timing, get easily screwed by having to move \/ dodge shouldn't be behind classes that get optimal results by little effort. \r\rEspecially this raid tier it's disgusting how favoured are warlocks and shadow priests due to tons of multidot \/ havoc opportunities while other patterns of dps are rarely implemented to be of benefit. And this is Blizzard's fault for not putting enough encounter variety and making half the fights having adds apart from the boss (required by the encounter). \r\rAnd then having your usual melee unfriendly bosses like blockade and conclave so guilds trim their melee roster to the usual warrior, dh, rogue, maybe monk, all the other melee specs are sidelined because how powerful are range dps this tier, especially warlock, priest, druid. This story friggin' repeats itself every single time. Nighthold was probably the last raid where having more melee than ranged on the roster wasn't completely crippling the progression, even though you know the game has 9 melee classes but only 6 ranged classes. \r\rGuilds don't want to recruit feral druids and survival hunters not because they do bad dps, but because Blizzard keeps putting melee unfriendly fights together with mandatory melee classes (warrior, dh, monk buffs \/ debuffs) so there's never space for the "optional" melee specs, they're always sidelined in favour of slotting more warlocks or w\/e. \r\rBtw it's a 5th raid in a row where warlocks are stupidly strong due to class and encounter design combined. How about you make a raid tier where mages and hunters are better than warlocks once every 3 years Blizz...

Commento di Sykoh23

on 2019-02-13T21:16:03-06:00

I was really looking forward to a more in-depth look into the ebb and flow of the Meta. A very recent example is Explosive Potential for Demonology Warlocks. IMO this makes the rotation clunky and can lead to worse performance than the previous Azerite trait recommendations. \r\rTo me, the Meta feels like simulations get posted and people take those specs\/classes as carved in stone instead of finding what works best in-game for the content they participate in. \r\rFor the record, I've despised Affliction on my 'lock and resent what Assassination has become for my Rogue over the last few xpacs as a casual player. I don't get turned away from content because I've learned how to play the other specs to a better potential.

Commento di deathlavitz

on 2019-02-13T21:24:28-06:00

"In reality, all specs are viable in the majority of current content. A good player will perform well in any class, regardless of how bad it is perceived to be."\r\rNever any more truth then in that line.

Commento di Stormwander

on 2019-02-13T21:26:32-06:00

This article was fabulous and I hope a lot of people take it to heart. Bring the player, not the class. Play what you enjoy and stop believing dps is everything when things like interrupts and following mechanics are far more useful.

Commento di Dawnrider

on 2019-02-13T21:32:57-06:00

And this is why Windwalkers get screwed over time after time. Who cares if we do a lot of damage when Blizzard refuses to give us any kind of utility, making us useless for anything other than damage, which isn't as needed, and actually isn't as high thanks to them constantly nerfing us.

Commento di Kheridan

on 2019-02-13T21:37:34-06:00

This article was fabulous and I hope a lot of people take it to heart. Bring the player, not the class. Play what you enjoy and stop believing dps is everything when things like interrupts and following mechanics are far more useful.

Interrupts and following mechanics are baseline things you should be doing without causing a loss to dps..

Commento di wordup

on 2019-02-13T21:39:23-06:00

I was really looking forward to a more in-depth look into the ebb and flow of the Meta. A very recent example is Explosive Potential for Demonology Warlocks. IMO this makes the rotation clunky and can lead to worse performance than the previous Azerite trait recommendations.

To me, the Meta feels like simulations get posted and people take those specs\/classes as carved in stone instead of finding what works best in-game for the content they participate in.

For the record, I've despised Affliction on my 'lock and resent what Assassination has become for my Rogue over the last few xpacs as a casual player. I don't get turned away from content because I've learned how to play the other specs to a better potential.

This was something we were looking at sidelining for a follow up after the tier is fairly complete. There are a lot of things already that were unexplored and have since been found (that have existed for a long time mind you); and examples of things that when they were found immediately actioned and nerfed beforehand. The thing with an article like this is that when it starts tackling current meta situations, you usually need to wait for it to settle to have enough things to talk about - BoD already has a lot of potential talking points that I think could be really interesting to elaborate on in a part 2.

There's a solid block of traits especially that have been very curious in the months leading up to, and the post-BoD environment that are a very interesting take on external factors that manipulate meta perception based on how widespread the knowledge of something is. Primal Primer for Enhancement being nerfed because it was known; while Flashpoint\/Explosive Potential remaining because it wasn't explored publicly is also a very curious event which begs the question just how many could have been missed.

Commento di Anatta

on 2019-02-13T21:48:12-06:00

hmm Druid tank vs DK tank enough said\r\rThe whole point of the article is that it's not a case of "enough said."\r\rI ran a +10 today with a Death Knight tanking and another with a Druid tanking. The DK had 9 higher ilvl, they did about the same damage, logs showed the druid needed less healing from the healer (although in neither case was the healer struggling to cope), and we cleared both dungeons in time. There's all kinds of useful stuff you can do with anti-magic shield and gorefiend's grasp. There's all kinds of useful stuff you can do with ursol's vortex, typhoon (or mass entangle), and soothe. But we didn't really do anything fancy, we just killed the bad mans and picked up our hydrocores. The idea that you need a specific set of specs to farm +10 dungeons or do heroic raiding is absurd.

Commento di mobiledruid

on 2019-02-13T23:05:17-06:00

Didn't really understand article, but, I have killed Hogger...does that count for anything?

Commento di Demoware

on 2019-02-13T23:11:47-06:00

Meta doesn't skew spec strength. Spec strength creates the meta. When Blizzard goes full ham fisted on specs they either die or shine. For example, Rogues are mandatory to push keys and highly sought after due to their damage and utility. No one is going to objectively take a far inferior class over a rogue even if you aren't trying to push. Same goes for Druid\/Monk healers or Warrior tanks. These classes far outperform other classes full stop, sure you can take a Shaman healer for your +10 but it will never perform nearly as well as the Druid or Monk. Same goes for DPS or Tanks. To argue that we're blindly following the meta because you can find a super niche fit for a class is mind boggling.

Commento di wordup

on 2019-02-13T23:36:14-06:00

Meta doesn't skew spec strength. Spec strength creates the meta. When Blizzard goes full ham fisted on specs they either die or shine. For example, Rogues are mandatory to push keys and highly sought after due to their damage and utility. No one is going to objectively take a far inferior class over a rogue even if you aren't trying to push. Same goes for Druid\/Monk healers or Warrior tanks. These classes far outperform other classes full stop, sure you can take a Shaman healer for your +10 but it will never perform nearly as well as the Druid or Monk. Same goes for DPS or Tanks. To argue that we're blindly following the meta because you can find a super niche fit for a class is mind boggling.\r\rI could find a few examples of things that have simply not been looked at properly and are blasted as gospel already this tier, but just look at Uldir. Resto Shaman was considered borderline unusable by Method and was publicly canned, lo and behold Limit kills G'huun with one - and the same goes for Fire Mage vs. the rest of the tier. In BoD Demo is considered the weakest Warlock spec for 1-2 weeks for many bosses, (while internally it is known wrt explosive potential, it isn't public) it suddenly rockets out of the gates as a massive overperformer because it simply wasn't researched by the top guilds. You can find infinite reasons to argue for the spec that has been thoroughly researched because those at the top dedicated time to doing so, because they have done that work for you - can you say the same for the ones that haven't had that time spent without leaning on assumption?

Commento di Durendillehunt

on 2019-02-14T01:23:10-06:00

In reality, all specs are viable in the majority of current content. \r\rI feel like this entire article is trying to gaslight me.\r\rNo, they are right. It's just that 'majority of current content' is probably 'everything that isn't raids or mythic+', and that's the two things people are sticking around for.\r\rAs a BM hunter progressing through BD mythic, it does suck when your spec is underperforming, but doesn't stop you from progressing.